 Tagline: Uncle Leo's bedtime story for you older tots! The things they do among the playful rich - Oh, boy! "Hollywood's most wise and sparkling comedy. All the performances are just perfect." -Halliwell's Film Guide Here comes the bride! And the ex-husband. And a gossip-rag columnist on assignment. Here come Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart in a peerless comedy romance (directed by George Cukor) about a faultfinding, bride-to-be socialite who gets her comeuppance and an unexpected Mr. Right. After being labeled "box-office poison," Hepburn rekindled her stardom with a beguiling reprise of her 1939 Broadway role. Top-billed Grant demanded and got a then-colossal $137,000 salary -- donating it to British War Relief. And Stewart won his only Best Actor Academy Award as the wisecracking scribe. (Writer Donald Ogden Stewart won the film's second Oscar for adapting Philip Barry's play). In 1998, Story's success story continued when it made the American Film Institute's 100 Best American Films list. Storyline: Philadelphia socialites Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven married impulsively, with their marriage and subsequent divorce being equally passionate. They broke up when Dexter's drinking became excessive, it a mechanism to cope with Tracy's unforgiving manner to the imperfect, imperfections which Dexter admits he readily has. Two years after their break-up, Tracy is about to remarry, the ceremony to take place at the Lord mansion. Tracy's bridegroom is nouveau riche businessman and aspiring politician George Kittredge, who is otherwise a rather ordinary man and who idolizes Tracy. The day before the wedding, three unexpected guests show up at the Lord mansion: Macaulay Connor (Mike to his friends), Elizabeth Imbrie - the two who are friends of Tracy's absent brother, Junior - and Dexter himself. Dexter, an employee of the tabloid Spy magazine, made a deal with its publisher and editor Sidney Kidd to get a story on Tracy's wedding - the wedding of the year - in return for Kidd not ... Written by Huggo Cast Notes: Cary Grant (C. K. Dexter Haven), Katharine Hepburn (Tracy Samantha Lord), James Stewart (Macaulay [Mike] Connor), Ruth Hussey (Elizabeth [Liz] Imbrie), John Howard [I] (George Kittredge), Roland Young (Uncle Willie), John Halliday [I] (Seth Lord), Mary Nash [I] (Margaret Lord), Virginia Weidler (Dinah Lord), Henry Daniell (Sidney Kidd), Lionel Pape (Edward), Rex Evans (Thomas). User Comment: Jo-77 Sydney • Firstly, let me say, that I love Kate Hepburn. She's my favourite actress, and in my opinion, she can do no wrong. For this reason, I'd probably give a good rating to every movie she made. But 'The Philadelphia Story' really does deserve wonderful praise. It's by far the most sophisticated, and in my opinion, the greatest comedy ever made, one of Kate's greatest roles. She's absolutely hilarious as Tracy Lord, bringing perfection to the role she created on the stage a year before the film, mocking, insulting and making fun out of Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. Her drunken scene with Stewart is pure magic and her mockery of him ('dear professor') is wonderful. Grant and Stewart are fabulous, Stewart as the rough and tumble reporter infatuated with Tracy and Grant as the neglected ex- husband. Ruth Hussey and Virginia Weidler are fantastic in supporting roles, and really add to the hilarity of the whole picture. A funny, bouyant ride through the 1940's- I completely recommend it! Summary: The most sophisticated comedy ever! User Comment: Robert W. Moore (Chicago, IL USA), March 28, 2003 • In 1940, Katherine Hepburn's movie career was in desperate condition. Her 1938 film BRINGING UP BABY, although recognized as a Howard Hawks's masterpiece today, was at the time a box office failure. The failure signaled the temporary end of demand for her talents in Hollywood, although she had HOLIDAY in the can (and costarring, like both BRINGING UP BABY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, Cary Grant). So, she went back to the stage, in a play written specifically for her, and the subsequent hit was an unexpected and triumphant return to the screen for Hepburn. Her career never looked back again, especially when two years later she teamed with Spencer Tracy for the first time. Ironically, she originally requested that Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play the Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart roles. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY is such an extraordinarily well-done film that one can watch it repeatedly, reveling each time in new and hidden details. It strikes the perfect balance of being spectacularly well-acted, hysterically funny, and delightfully silly while maintaining an elegant veneer. The cast is nearly overwhelming in its quality, with Hepburn and Grant turning in especially fine performances. Jimmy Stewart is also superb, though he won an Oscar for this year that he probably didn't deserve. The Academy in 1940 may have been giving him the award as an apology for not having won the year before for MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. Unfortunately, this meant that Jimmy Stewart's best friend Henry Fonda failed to win for one of the finest performances in the history of American cinema, as Tom Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Still, although the Oscar clearly should have gone to Fonda, Stewart manages a great turn. He and Grant manage a great moment when Stewart adlibbed a hiccup, and Grant, not batting an eye, adlibbed, "Excuse me." The rest of the cast is flawless. Too many excel to mention, but special mention must be made of Roland Young as Uncle Willie, Virginia Weidler in a marvelous turn as Tracy Lord's precocious younger sister, and the erstwhile Errol Flynn nemesis Henry Daniell as the devious and unscrupulous Sidney Kidd. Although this film holds up magnificently upon reviewings, there is nothing like seeing it for the first time. I remember vividly how exciting it was to watch this in the lamentably demised Lincoln Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, having absolutely no idea how the film was going to end only five minutes before the closing credits. Who will Tracy marry? Will she marry? How will the film managed to tie up all the loose ends. I have a list of my all time favorite lines from films. One of my favorites comes from this one. On the morning after Tracy has gotten rip-roaringly drunk, she has almost no memories of what happened, but what she does recall makes her fear that she might have been in a compromising situation with Jimmy Stewart. After Stewart assures the confused and fearful Tracy Lord that nothing happened because she was drunk and "there are rules about that sort of thing," the infinitely relieved Tracy says, "I think men are wonderful." The film has managed to permeate our culture in subtle ways, from inspiring musical remakes, to providing famous adult movie stars with their names, to providing foundations for jokes (in the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventure "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam," whenever Bullwinkle sees his jewel encrusted small boat, he mutters under his breath, "Yar, yar"). Summary: One of the great comedies of all time IMDb Rating (07/25/14): 8.1/10 from 43,302 users IMDb Rating (10/15/07): 7.9/10 from 17,630 users Top 250: #207 IMDb Rating (02/22/05): 8.2/10 from 4,605 users Top 250: #111
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